In 1798 the US Congress formed the Mississippi Territory out of the present-day states of Mississippi and Alabama above the thirty-first parallel, but during the first decade of the nineteenth century, the presence of the American government was rarely felt in Alabama. The Alabama portion of the territory had very few white settlers, and until 1810 most of the area remained under the control of several Indian tribes, including the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw. Though six men were appointed as governors of the Mississippi Territory, it was not until 1817 that a governor specific to the Alabama Territory was appointed.
The first governor of the Mississippi Territory was Winthrop Sargent, a native of Massachusetts and hero of the American Revolution. Appointed in 1798, Sargent ruled largely without a legislature during most of his time in office, and he imposed the first law code upon the territory. He rarely left the seat of government at Natchez and was so taken with the area that he became a successful cotton planter near there and lived in Mississippi for the remainder of his life. It is not known if he ever set foot in Alabama. He was briefly succeeded as governor in 1801 by John Steele, a Virginia native who had been Sargent’s secretary. That same year Pres. Thomas Jefferson appointed a Tennessean, twenty-six-year-old William C. C. Claiborne, to the territorial governorship. Claiborne began the process that allowed increasing white settlement into Alabama when he negotiated a treaty with the Choctaw Indian chief Pushmataha in 1802. After the United States acquired Louisiana, the Alabama portion of the Mississippi territory held little interest for the Natchez government. At Jefferson’s behest Claiborne directed his attention toward New Orleans, eventually becoming the head of the government there.
As a result of Claiborne’s inattention, his secretary Cato West ran the territorial government for a couple of years and was legally governor ad interim, but little occurred during his temporary administration. Not until Robert Williams, another Virginian, was appointed to the governorship in 1805 did major efforts occur that brought more settlers to Alabama from established states. In 1808 Williams received lands in the Tennessee River Valley from the Chickasaws and Cherokees that led to the creation of Madison County. By 1810 this county contained half the population of the Mississippi Territory. Williams also helped negotiate treaties with the Choctaws that cleared more land for settlement in southwest Alabama. During Williams’s tenure, former Vice Pres. Aaron Burr was arrested in the Mississippi Territory near the present-day Alabama community of McIntosh in 1807 and charged with treason and conspiracy to commit treason. Many believed Williams was involved in Burr’s schemes, and his reputation was marred, but he remained governor.
The last governor of the Mississippi Territory to lead Alabama was David Holmes, a Pennsylvania native who had also been a lawyer and politician in Virginia. Appointed by Pres. James Madison in 1809, Holmes held office during the first phase of a massive movement of white settlers into Alabama. Struck by what has been described as “Alabama fever,” these settlers wanted the fertile federal land selling for cheap prices. Th is influx of white men, however, and the African American slaves that many brought with them, led to increasing clashes with the remaining Indian tribes. When the Creek Indians were defeated by Gen. Andrew Jackson’s army, a large land cession occurred. After another treaty with the Choctaws in 1816, nearly all of Alabama was open to settlement. Holmes was a popular man among the land-hungry settlers and remained as governor until 1817.
In March 1817 Congress passed the legislation that created the state of Mississippi and made a separate territory of Alabama. David Holmes was elected the first governor of Mississippi, and William Wyatt Bibb, a former US senator from Georgia, was appointed by Pres. James Monroe to be governor of the new Alabama territory. Bibb served when the state held its first elections, surveyed and divided its land, and formalized its relations with the Indian tribes. He also led a fight that kept Mississippi from taking a large portion of Alabama’s land and was instrumental in putting the first state capital in Cahaba. After Congress passed the legislation that enabled Alabama to become a state, William Wyatt Bibb became its first governor in 1819.
Photo Caption: From left, Winthrop Sargent, William C. C. Claiborne, and David Holmes, were all governors of the territory. [Alabama Department of Archives and History]
This story was first featured in Alabama Heritage magazine, Issue 114.
About the Author
Samuel L. Webb, a native of York, Alabama, holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Alabama School of Law and a PhD in history from the University of Arkansas. He taught history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1988 to 2009 and is now an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama.
